When, If Ever, is it Appropriate to Blame the Victim?

Great Debates
121

I’m going to keep this thread in mind for the next time I might feel the urge to suggest someone who experienced misfortune might have exercised a lack of prudence.

I have not conducted a study, but my impression is that in specific discussions folk have generally not drawn such fine distinctions. If someone suggests that while the person did not deserve what they got, they did act foolishly, my impression is that respondents are far more likely to condemn such remark as “victim blaming,” rather than saying, “yes, that is an astute observation.”

122

I keep thinking of the scorpion hitching a ride on the back of the turtle. What did the turtle expect? He knew what the scorpion was. Is the scorpion responsble for striking the turtle? Absolutely. But the turtle should have known better.

123

I do try to avoid the “he had it coming” rhetoric though I admit I’m not always successful. When I lived in Little Rock, my neighbor shot and killed a 17 year old kid during a home invasion. Just to be clear, the kid was the one who kicked down mine neighbor’s kitchen door in the middle of the night. The kid was 17 and while I don’t think he deserved to die he did suffer forseeable consequences to his actions.

124

‘The turtle should have known better’ is a useless judgment. It’s true, but it’s also obvious and unnecessary.

‘How can I behave more wisely than the turtle?’ is a useful question.

125

The thread is about whether it’s appropriate to place some blame on the turtle.

126

I am aware of that, and this is my contribution to the thread on that topic. Perhaps we are qualifying ‘appropriate’ differently from one another.

127

Would: can this story about the turtle be used as a cautionary example, when warning yet other people about what happened to the turtle be a useful question?

128

That is one thing- but they are not to blame for the crime, the criminal is.

It was a frog not a turtle. The turtle would be okay- since is has a shell.

129

A frog makes more sense because amphibians aren’t known for their prudence.

130

Sure, in fact I think that’s pretty much congruent with ’ How can I behave more wisely than the turtle?’
I mean, the turtle is fictional in this story, so simply blaming the turtle is especially futile.

But I think that’s my point; so much victim blaming is just gleeful ‘well, they deserved it’, with nothing more to it than perhaps an inward measure of ‘and of course I don’t deserve anything like that’. It doesn’t go anywhere; it achieves nothing positive (and for me, this utility, or lack thereof, is a key measure of whether or not it is appropriate).

131

Super easy to scam.

132

I suppose it’s possible that I am interpreting the meaning of ‘blame’ in a specific way. To me, that term implies more than just an assessment of factual responsibility for a chain of events.

I mean, I put the cup on the table; the cup is on the table; the presence of the cup on the table is attributable to my deliberate action, but in most circumstances it would be absurd to describe me as ‘to blame’ for the presence of the cup on the table. Blame implies some sort of shame or disgrace, doesn’t it?

133

Blame is typically used to denote fault or wrong. And looking up the definition in the dictionary that’s what I find, though I realize words have a lot of meanings.

134

What about the person who enters an adulturous relationship, knowing that the other spouse exists and that they don’t know and have not agreed to it; and then later after a divorce marries the now-divorced person who they cheated with; and then later yet complains that their now-spouse cheated on them?

That is a rare case in which I’d say it was their own fault. The person cheated with you – why did you think they wouldn’t cheat on you?

The cheater’s also at fault, of course, presuming that they promised fidelity. But I would say that they both are.

135

Understood, but would you agree that victim-blaming is (or at least often seems to be) more than just a simple dispassionate analysis and assignment of fault or wrong?

136

Oh, sure. I started this thread because I thought there were times when it was appropriate to place blame on the “victim” and other times when it was appropriate at all. As others have pointed out, sometimes placing blame is just a way to point out that someone deserves what happened to them or maybe to make someone feel good about it not happening to them.

137

Case in point:

138

Root cause analysis is, I think, almost universally a good idea. Understanding exactly what happened and what actions and causes led to or contributed to what effects, is I think, at worst neutral and at best very useful - it gives us insight into how we might take steps to change or reinforce our behaviours and our world, in order to achieve the outcomes we desire instead of the ones that happened.

In that sense, identifying that the negligence or recklessness or carelessness or ignorance or other fault of an individual’s actions or habits is not a bad thing. It’s just data.

I’m sure there must be special exceptions where it would be better if things were left unexplored; where there is nothing good to be found, and only pain in the knowing, but I think it’s fair to assume those will be pretty rare exceptions.

Most of the time, if outcome Z happened as a traceable set of events caused or provoked by actions X and Y, it’s better to know that than to not. We can make a good outcome arise from out of a bad one.

But I don’t think that’s victim-blaming. Not yet.

Victim-blaming is, I think (and correct me if I am wrong), when you take those facts of the matter and interpret them in a moral judgment frame, such as:

  • Well, that was bad, but it’s her own fault
  • Yeah, it was terrible, but he deserves it
  • She only has herself to blame
  • He’s made his bed, now he has to lie in it

This is where it starts to veer away from being useful, IMO. A lot of this is just posturing about our own sense of moral superiority, because we believe we don’t possess that specific fault.

Victim-blaming can also be where, in the absence of facts, you merely assume the facts of the matter (or where you connect unrelated facts), often based on preconceptions or biases, and take similar moral postures.

In these latter cases, what’s happening is that we just derive a good feeling arising out of a bad thing that happened to someone else. That’s not necessarily wrong if it takes nothing away from the victim, but as a pattern of thought, it’s bound to reinforce those biases and preconceptions, and modify future attitudes.

139

There seems to be a common false assumption that there is always a constant quantity of total responsibility, and assigning some responsibility to someone who has been harmed excuses the person doing harm by the same amount.

To demonstrate why this is false, consider the following cases:

(1) I am warned: Do not go into that forest, there is an axe murderer hiding there.
I ignore the warning, and get axed.

(2) I am warned: Do not go into that forest, there is an escaped tiger hiding there.
I ignore the warning, and get eaten.

(3) I am warned: Do not go into that forest, there is a storm and trees are falling down left and right.
I ignore the warning, and get crushed.

We can all agree that in cases (2) and (3) I bear 100 % responsibility for my fate (tigers and falling trees not having moral agency or being obliged by law or manners to act responsible)

In case (1) the axe murderer of course is 100% responsible. But: I’d argue that my responsibility for what befalls me is no lesser in case (1) that in cases (2) and (3), i.e. the total responsibility of all involved in case (1) exceeds 100 %.

140

That example has stuck with me. If one said, “serves him right” or something, is that victim blaming? Is the 17 yr old a “victim”, when his acts were solely responsible for bringing about the result? I would’ve thought the neighbor more of a victim, both of having their door broken down in the middle of the night, and having to live with the memory of having killed someone. If I say, I feel less sorry for the kid shot breaking down the door than I would for a victim of a driveby who was minding their own business, is that victim blaming?